Free White Collar Girl by Renée Rosen

as
little missy, sweetheart
or
honeybuns
.
    I had recently pitched an important story to Mr. Ellsworth about the infant mortality rate inside Chicago’s orphanages. I had spent my nights and weekends working on it, had met with a doctor from the city’s Board of Health and had ventured into shady pockets of town to interview former orphanage employees. I wrote and rewrote and polished the entire article, and when it was ready, I showed it to Mr. Ellsworth. He had a way of stroking his beard while reading your work that said he was unimpressedand that you were wasting his time. I remember he was stroking his beard that day just before he set my piece aside.
    â€œBut you didn’t finish reading it,” I said.
    â€œI didn’t need to finish it.”
    â€œBut it’s a good story.”
    â€œIt’s a story that I have no interest in running.”
    â€œAll I’m asking for is a chance. Can’t you give me a break? I just want to be helpful.”
    Mr. Ellsworth gazed at me and rubbed his chin. “You really want to be helpful?”
    â€œYes.”
    He reached for the mug on the corner of his desk. “Then go get me a cup of coffee. Black.”
    â€¢Â Â Â â€¢Â Â Â â€¢
    A fter that I vowed not to pitch another article to Mr. Ellsworth, Mr. Copeland or even Mr. Pearson until I had something so big, so enticing that they would have to run it.
    All this was going through my mind as I went to the morgue and began digging for information on Richard Ahern.
    I could still hear the commotion from the city room, seeping in through the doorway as I glanced around. Naked bulbs swung overhead in a room lined with filing cabinets that stood five feet tall. There were heavy wooden drawers along with rows and rows of flat files that squeaked each time I pulled one out. When I stopped to think about what the morgue housed, the history of the paper and of the city, it was mind-boggling. If there was something written about anyone or anything, it was lurking in that room. And that’s when I decided to take a moment and locate the archives from June 1953.
    My fingers worked through the files, running over tattered labels and rumpled folders while I searched for anything reported on my brother’s death. I harbored a foolish hope that the answersI sought—some tidbit of information that would lead to my brother’s killer—were tucked inside these archives.
    I pulled a folder dated June 10, 1953:
    REPORTER KILLED IN HIT-AND-RUN
    Sun-Times
reporter Eliot Walsh was killed in a hit-and-run late last night on the corner of State Street and Grand Avenue. Walsh, twenty-five, was struck at approximately nine p.m., presumably on his way to the subway. Authorities say there were no eyewitnesses. However, a passerby, Adam Javers, heard the squeal of tires and then saw the body on the sidewalk and called for an ambulance. Walsh was rushed to Henrotin Hospital, where he later died at eleven fifty-three p.m., during surgery. . . .
    I finished that article and checked through the rest of the folder, going through his obituaries and other reports about the accident in the
Chicago American,
the
Daily News
and the
Sun-Times
. I’d already read all those articles when they first appeared back in ’53. By the time I’d looked at the last one, I was drained and agitated. There was nothing new to be found. I slapped the files shut and slammed the drawer closed. Even after two years my anger was still raw.
    I took a step back and leaned against another file cabinet, clenching and unclenching my fists until the frustration left me. Or maybe it just subsided, because really, it never fully disappeared. Afterward I cleared my throat and got busy looking for what I’d come for in the first place.
    I spent the next couple hours in the morgue concentrating on Ahern, and when I surfaced, I had clips that had been cross-referenced five or six times. I returned to my desk